Beca and Chloe's Infinite Playlist
by nyanyan913
Summary: It all starts when Beca asks Chloe to be her girlfriend for five minutes. She only needs five minutes to avoid her ex-girlfriend, who walked in to her band's show, with a new guy. And then, with one kiss, Beca and Chloe are off on an adventure and smack in the middle of all the joy, anxiety, confusion, and excitement of a first date. Based of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I don't own anything, especially the songs that will be used. Rated M for future Chapters.

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 **Chapter 1: Next 5 Minutes**

Our day begins in the middle of the night. I'm not paying attention to anything but the music we produce, no scratch that, the noise in my ears. Stacie is screaming in the microphone, Amy is flailing, and I am the clockwork. I am the one who takes this thing called music and lines it up with this thing called time. I am the ticking, I am the pulsing, and I am underneath every part of this moment. We don't have a drummer. Stacie has thrown off her shirt, she's on her bra now, and Amy is careening into feedback and I am behind them, I am the generator. I am listening and at the same time not listening because what we're playing isn't something I'm thinking about and then her in the crowd and I fall apart.

I fucking told her not to come. While she was busy ripping me into pieces that was the one fragment I begged to keep. Please don't come to the shows. I don't want to see you there. And she had said yes, and it hadn't been a lie then. But it turned into a lie at some point, because here she is, and everything about me goes from crying out to just plain crying-all in the time it takes for me to see the shape of her lips. And then I see-oh fuck no-that she's not alone, that she's with some guy, and while she'll say she's come to watch me, there's no doubt in my mind that she's come so I can watch her. It's over, she'd said, and wasn't that the biggest lie of all? I am stumbling as she leans into this guy and rocks her head like I'm making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as she's given me pain and I find myself bleeding invisibly across the stage.

Stacie is taking the song somewhere it's never been before: a fourth minute. I'm rutting now, waiting for the wind-down. Amy looks like she's on the verge of a solo, which is never a good place for Amy to be. I move my feet, turn away from her, and try to pretend she's not there, which is the biggest fucking joke I've ever not laughed at. I try to get Stacie's attention from the periphery, but she's too busy wiping the sweat on her chest to notice. Finally, though, she gets a burst of energy strong enough to end the thing on. So she throws out her arm and howls and I run us into the ground with a final lurch. The crowd sends us a burst of their own noise. I try to hear her voice, try to separate that single pitch from the shouts and applause. But she's as lost to me as she was the night I cried and she didn't turn back to see if I was okay. Three weeks, two days, and twenty-three hours ago, not that I'm counting or anything. And she's already with someone else.

I am the equipment bitch for this gig, so while Stacie jumps into the crowd to find her most willing admirer and Amy blushingly retreats to her understanding-but-used-to-be-a-jerk boyfriend, I have to immediately detox so I can pack up our gear. I go from chords to cords, amped to amps. One of the guys from the next band is cool and helps me recover the cases from the back corner of the stage. But I'm the only one who can touch the instruments, putting them carefully to bed for the night. Then I offer to help the new band set up, and am glad when they say yes so I can be connecting them to the soundboard instead of spending all my energy resisting her.

My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance-anything short of contact-is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. "It's over" can't kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can't stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I'm tired, she'd said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she'd said, No, I'm tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn't over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to.

I keep my back to the crowd as I store the equipment and instruments somewhere safe. Then comes the moment when I can't keep my back to it anymore, since there's only so long that you can stare at a wall before you feel like an idiot. I am saved by the next band, which cranks the volume even higher and soon engulfs us all in beautiful chaos. I dare a glance into the crowd and I don't see her anymore.

I think Julie will like this band, and the fact that I know this stabs me again, because all the knowledge of what she likes is perfectly useless now. I wonder who the guy is. I wonder if the two of them knew each other three weeks and three days ago. I'm glad I didn't really see him because then I'd think of them naked. Now I just think of her naked, and it's such a vivid touch of memory that my fingers actually move to take it in. I turn my head, as if I've been actually seeing her, and see Amy and her boyfriend Bumper making out to the music in a corner-of-the-universe way. Stacie, I figure, is still at the bar, still performing. We're underage, but that doesn't matter here. The crowd is mostly older than us-college or should-be-in-college-and I'm aware of not really fitting in. Some of the older guys in the crowd check me out, give me a nod. It's not like I wear a Badge of Straight or anything. I nod back sometimes, when I think it's a musical acknowledgment and not an invitation.

I find Stacie at the bar, talking to a girl our age who looks familiar in that Type kind of way. When I get to where they're standing, I'm introduced as "Beca effin Mitchell," and she's introduced as "Cynthia-Rose" Stacie thanks me for being equipment bitch, and from the way the conversation doesn't continue from there I know I'm interrupting. If it was Amy, my agitation would probably be noticed. But Stacie needs you to spell emotions out for her, and right now I'm not in the mood. So I just tell her where I left the stuff and pretend I'm going off to search for a clear spot on the bar to summon the bartender from. And once I'm pretending that's the truth, I figure it might as well be the truth. I still can't see Julie, and there's a small part of me that's wondering if it was even her in the crowd. Maybe it was someone who looked like Julie, which would explain the guy who didn't look like anybody.

The band stopped playing their music. They're kinda better than average, and the band gets a lunge of applause and cheers. I clap, too, and notice that the girl next to me puts two fingers in her mouth to whistle old-fashioned style. The sound is clear and spirited, and makes me think of Little League. The girl is dressed in a flannel shirt, and I can't tell whether that's because she's trying to bring back the only fashion style of the past fifty years that hasn't been brought back or whether it's because the shirt is as damn comfortable as it looks. She has very red locks and a haircut that reads private school even though she's messed it up to try to hide it. The next band opened for Le Tigre on their last tour, and I figure this girl's here to see them. If I was a different kind of guy, I might try to strike up a friendly conversation, just to be, I dunno, friends. But I feel that if I talk to someone else right now, all I'll be able to do is unload.

Amy and Bumper would probably be ready to go if I wanted them to, but I'm pretty sure Stacie hasn't figured out yet whether she's coming back with us or not, and I'd be an asshole to put her on the spot and ask. So I'm stuck and I know it, and that's when I look to my right and see Julie and her new guy approaching the beer-spilled bar to order another round of whatever I'm not having. It's definitely her, and I'm definitely fucked, because the between-band rush is pressing towards me now and if I try to leave, I'll have to push my way out, and if I have to push my way out, she'll see me making an escape and she'll know for sure that I can't take it, and even if that's the goddamn truth I don't want her to have actual proof. She is looking so hot and I am feeling so cold and the guy she's with has his hand on her arm in a way that just a friend would never, ever think of, and I guess that's my own proof. I am the old model and this is the new model and I could crash out a year's worth of time on my music and nothing, absolutely nothing, would change.

She sees me. She can't fake surprise at seeing me here, because of course she fucking knew I'd be here. So she does a little smile thing and whispers something to the new model and I can tell just from her expression that after they get their now-being-poured drinks they are going to come over and say hello and good show and-how could she be so stupid and cruel? — How are you doing? And I can't stand the thought of it. I see it all unfolding and I know I have to do something, anything, to stop it.

So I, this random person in an average band, turn to this girl in flannel who I don't even know and say: "I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?"

End of Chapter 1.


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you for the views and reviews and the follows, much appreciated.

Aubrey here is a slut drunk, but still normal Aubrey when not.

 _Chapter 1 Summary: Beca is playing for a band, then she saw her ex, Julie, together with a guy. She finds a way to avoid her by asking a flannel wearing, red headed girl to be her girlfriend for the next 5 minutes._

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 **Chapter 2: Here's my Kidney**

Ralph from the band before insists that the girl at the back of that 3 person band that has no drummer is straight. I have no idea how he got the idea. I mean she's clearly gay. Trust me. There are certain things a girl just knows. Have you seen her so called 'ear monstrosities', she's definitely not straight.

The incidental fact of her gayness doesn't mean I want to be her five-minute girlfriend, like I'm some 7-Eleven quick stop on her slut train. Only because I am the one loser here who hasn't lost all her senses to beer, dope, or hormones do I have the sense to hold back my original instinct-to yell back "FUCK, NO!" in response to her question.

I have to think about Aubrey, scratch that, I always have to think about drunk Aubrey.

I noticed ear-monstrosity loading equipment after her band's set while her band mates abandoned her to score some action. I understand that scene. I am that scene, cleaning up everyone else's mess.

Ear-monstrosity also dresses in a flannel shirt like mine. And if she's the equipment bitch, she has a van. The van's probably a piece of scrap metal with a leaking carburetor that as likely as not will pop a tire or run out of gas in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel, but it's a risk I have to take. Somebody's got to get Aubrey home. She's normally uptight, but she sometimes lets herself go, and when I say sometimes, I mean almost every party that we're at. She's too drunk to risk taking her on the bus. She's also so drunk she'll go home with anyone if I'm not there to take her back to our dorm where she can sleep it off. Groupie bitch. If I didn't love her so much, I'd kill her.

She's lucky my parents love her just as much. Her dad, super strict. One reason why she's so uptight on a normal basis. My parents, they adore Aubrey, beautiful Aubrey with the long blonde hair, the big cherry Tootsie Pop lips. Mom and Dad would move past disowning me and outright kill me if they thought I wasn't looking after their beloved Aubrey. She inspires that kind of devotion in people. It's nauseating, except I am totally under Aubrey's spell, too, her lead minion, have been since nursery school.

I look around the club as the between-set mass of people swarm past/through/into me like I'm a ghost with the inconvenience of malleable flesh getting in their way on the way to the beer. Damn, I've lost Aubrey again. She is big on Ralph tonight, which is cool, they don't completely suck but I think he's on coke tonight and I gotta make sure he doesn't get her alone in a corner. But I'm only 5-foot-4 on tippy toes, I need to be a 6-foot bouncer to separate the two of them, and 5-foot ear-monstrosity here standing in front of me, waiting to find out if I want to be her five-minute girlfriend and looking like that lost animal who goes around asking "Are you my mother?" in that kid book.

From behind her I don't see Aubrey but I do see that stupid bitch, Julie, rhymes with bitchy, forced I know, cuz that's what she'll do to someone, rip apart their piece. She's doing her Julie strut with her big boobs sticking out in front of her, wiggling her ass in that way that gets the instant attention of every dumb schmo in her wake, even the gays, who seem to be highly represented here tonight, ear-monstrosity notwithstanding. She's coming right towards me. No No NOOOOOOOOOOO. How did she find out Aubrey and I would be here tonight? Does she have lookouts with text pagers set up every place Aubrey and I go on a Saturday night, or what?

Girlfriend to the rescue! I answer ear-monstrosity's question by putting my hand around her neck and pulling her face to mine. God, I would do anything to avoid Julie recognizing me and trying to talk to me.

FUCK! I didn't expect ear-monstrosity to be such a good kisser. Asshole. See this, Ralph? NOT STRAIGHT. Confirmed. But I am not looking for chemistry here, just a ride home for my girl. I am also not looking for tongue, but ear-monstrosity wastes no time sliding its way into my mouth. My mouth revolts against my mind: Umm, feels good down here, steady girl, steaaaady!

No matter how good she tastes, this five-minute girlfriend still needs a few seconds to come up for air. I separate my mouth from hers, hoping to catch my breath and hoping to catch Julie walking away from us without having noticed me after all.

WOW. I feel like in this riot of people, I have been kicked in the stomach, but by the giddy police. Forget about the need for oxygen. My mouth wants to go back to the place it just left.

Unfortunately, Julie is standing right in front of us, hanging on to her latest slobber victim, who is near enough now that I can positively ID him as one of Aubrey's recent rejects. Julie clutches her arm tight around the guy's waist, probably squeezing out whatever remaining life that soul-sucking skank hasn't gotten out of him yet in the three weeks or so since Aubrey gave him the heave-ho.

Julie says, "Beca? Chloe? How do you two, like, know each other?"

I don't know why, but I do that thing Aubrey does to her male victims, where instead of taking the hand of ear-monstrosity, I place my hand at the back of her neck and scratch the nape softly, possessively, while Julie watches. My fingers scan the locks of her hair back there, and I feel goose bumps rising on her neck. I likee. There is some satisfaction in seeing Julie's bottom lip nearly fall to her chin in shock. That's the thing about Julie: She's never subtle.

Whatever I'm doing, it works. She storms away, speechless. Phew. That was easier than I expected.

I look at my watch. I believe my new girlfriend and I have about two minutes forty-five before we break up. I close my eyes and do the slight head turn, angling for another visitation from her lips. But she doesn't come back in for more mouth-to-mouth contact. She says, "How the hell do you know Julie?"

Then I remember. Julie called her BECA. Noooooooooo. That's her! BECA! The Beca effin Mitchell! The girl who wrote all the songs and poems about her, the best goddamn girlfriend the rest of us at Barden never had, the one Julie hooked up with after meeting her on the PATH train at the beginning of the school year and has lied to and cheated on ever since. Does BECA not think it's weird that she dated her that long and never once met any girls from her school? IDIOT!

But of course Julie wouldn't introduce her to us. She wouldn't be worried we'd rat out her indiscretions to her girlfriend, she'd be afraid she'd fall for Aubrey. Julie can have Aubrey's rejects, but she'd never offer up one of her own to Aubrey. Julie is so Single White Female, we like to joke that Aubrey should get a restraining order against her, except Julie provides us too much amusement to completely let her out of our reach. It's like a love-hate thing we have going with her. We don't feel guilty about it because there's only a month of school left and I can't imagine we'll ever see her again after our "have a great summer, good luck in college" phony sentiment yearbook finales. And karmically, I have repaid my mean-girl debt to Julie many times over. If she passed Chemistry and Calculus this year, it's because of me. Fuck, if she graduates at all, it's because of me.

I don't bother answering Beca's question about how the hell I know Julie. I've got to find Aubrey.

I stand up on the barstool. That's the only way I'll find her with all these people and this loud music and this stink sweat and this beer energy and this never-ending day that feels like it is only beginning in the middle of this night. I place my hand on Beca's head to steady my balance as I scan the crowd, and my hand can't help but rummage through her hair, just a little.

There she is! I see Aubrey huddling with Ralph at a corner table by the brick wall just off the stage. I jump down from the barstool and take off toward Aubrey, but Beca's hand clenches my wrist from behind me, pulling me back to her.

"Seriously," Beca says, "how the hell do you know Julie?"

Her grip pinches the watch on my wrist, and the 'aw' of the pinch turns my eyes from looking for Aubrey to looking straight at her. I notice how lost she looks, yet eager for me to stay with her. Her eyes kind and angry at the same time, and the noticing makes me remember a lyric from some song she wrote for Julie that she passed around in Latin class because she thought it was so lame.

You know I'd fall apart without you  
I don't know how you do what you do  
'Cause everything that don't make sense about me  
Makes sense when I'm with you

Anyone can tell you you're pretty  
And you get that all the time, I know you do  
But your beauty's deeper than the make-up  
And I wanna show you what I see tonight...

Fuck Julie. I would give body parts to have a girl write something like that for me. My kidney? Oh, both of them? Here, Beca, they're yours-just write more for me. I'll give you a start: girl in punk club asks strange girl to be her girlfriend for five minutes, girl kisses, girl then meets girl-what did you notice about this girl? Beca, let's hear some lyrics. Please? Ready. Set. Go.

I want to stomp my foot in frustration-for her, and for me. Because I know that whatever Julie did or said to her, it's what's given her that haunted puppy-dog look of pathetic despair. Julie's the reason she will probably become an embittered old fuck before she's even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying, cheating sluts because one of them broke her heart. I'm the girl who knows she's capable of poetry, because like I said, there are things I just know. I'm the one who could give her that old-fashioned song title of a thing called Devotion and True Love (However Complicated), if she ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I'm the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who, for one too-brief kiss, fantasized about ditching this joint with her, going all the way punk with her at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with her at sunrise, holding her hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in her. I would tell her, I heard you play, I've read your poetry, not that crap your band just performed, but those love letters and songs you wrote to Julie. I know what you're capable of and it's certainly more than being in an average band, you're better than that; and dude, having a drummer, it's like key, and you fucking need one. I would be equipment bitch for her every night, no complaints. But no, she's the type with a complex for the Julie type: the big tits, the dumb giggle, the blowhard. Literally.

You wanted easy. Well, you got it, pal.

I extract my wrist from her grip. But for some reason, instead of walking away, I pause for a moment and return my hand to her face, caressing her cheek, drawing light circles on her jaw with my index finger.

I tell her, "You poor schmuck."

End of Chapter 2.

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End Note

Song used: Wanted by Hunter Hayes

So you probably notice that chapter 1 is Beca POV and chapter 2 is Chloe POV, the story is alternating POV between them. Odd is for Beca, even is for Chloe.

Thanks for Reading.

Reviews (comments, suggestions, violent reactions and etc.) are all welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you for the views and reviews and the follows, much appreciated.

The story is quite slow paced, since everything happens in a night(and the morning after). So some chapters/parts are full of rants, thoughts and narrations of the character/s hence the boring part. I'm really sorry. And the story has 20 chapters, in a less than 12 hours setting. I will try to lessen the narration and try to improve. Thank you.

 _Chapter 2 Summary: Chloe was asked by a stranger to be her girlfriend for 5 minutes, she has no reason to accept until she saw her frienemy, Julie, so she kissed the said stranger. It turns out she was Julie's ex._

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 **Chapter 3: "We"**

Beca POV

When Julie passes by me, it's like the world is no longer three-dimensional. The third dimension falls away, then the second, and all I'm left with is one dimension, and that dimension is her.

But of course there's another dimension, too, and that dimension is time, and it keeps going and Julie keeps walking and all the other dimensions come back, and even though there are now more, it feels like a whole lot less.

And I'm left with this girl, this Siren of Mixed Signals, this Chloe. She's a fuck-good kisser, but clearly has some massive consistency issues. I ask her how the fuck she knows Julie, because that is leaving me completely confused, and at first she's looking at me like I'm this girl she didn't just start kissing out of nowhere, but then she's got her hand on my arm in a way that makes me really notice I have an arm, and then she's making to run away, and at the same time looking at me like I'm some cancer child. Then I take hold of her arm and she resists without really resisting. Finally she pulls away, only to touch my face in this way that reminds me exactly of her kiss.

Then she calls me "you poor schmuck."

And like some poor schmuck, I'm like, "Why?"

I can tell she knows something, but she's not saying. Instead she tells me, "I've got to get my friend."

"I'll come with you," I volunteer. I know Julie is somewhere behind me, maybe watching. And it's not like I have anything better to do than follow a fuck-good kisser wherever she wants to go. Stacie is climbing onto the stage now, and Amy with Bumper are nowhere in my line of vision.

"I'll tell you what," Chloe says. "You give us a ride, and I'll give you two extra minutes on your original offer."

"Seven's my lucky number," I tell her.

And she just looks at me.

"But really," I say. "How do you know Julie?"

"I fucked up her Barbies in fifth grade," she tells me. "And that's the way it's been ever since."

"You're from Barden?"

"Barden University. Barden is the one with reasonable college."

She's pushing through the crowd now, and I'm following.

"She was just here a second ago," she says.

"Who?"

"No one. Aubrey. I mean, just shut up for a second so I can think, okay?"

Like if I'm quiet, she'll suddenly be able to hear every fucking footstep in the club.

While she's peering around, I make the idiot move of looking behind me, and see Julie and the new model making out. She looks so hot in her Ramones shirt and the gold stockings I always asked her to wear because they make her look like something out of a Marvel comic. I remember taking that shirt off of her, those stockings off of her-her yelling careful, careful! as I started to get past her thighs. And now it's some other guy's hands that are thumbing their way all over her.

And she's looking at me the whole time. I swear she's looking at me.

I turn away and Chloe isn't there, but luckily she's only a few feet away. And the girl she's diving for looks kinda familiar. Not in a Didn't We Go To Camp Walla Walla Together? way, but more like, Didn't I Step Over You To Get To The Comfort Room Last Night? Right now she's hanging on to the guy like she's auditioning to be a pocket on his jacket. And I can tell he's about ready to sew her on. Only my Seven-Minute Girlfriend stands in the way. She's saying Aubrey's name like an older sister would say it, and from the resentment that flashes back in Aubrey's eyes I'd believe they were sisters if Chloe hadn't already called Aubrey her friend. I also think for a millisecond that they might be a couple, but something in Aubrey's expression makes it clear that they're friends without benefits.

Aubrey's about to say something really harsh, but suddenly Stacie launch into a fucking Green Day cover, and we're all seven years old again and dancing like we spit out the Ritalin while Mom wasn't looking. We become this one flailing paramecium mass, fever-connected as the guitarist riffs electrons. Even Julie must be a part of this, and if we're both a part of it, then that means we're still in some way connected. Everyone in this room is connected, except Chloe. She's the kind of statue they don't ever make, a statue of someone totally defeated. Aubrey's dancing against a guy like God or Billie Joe Armstrong meant her to do it. I try to obliterate myself in the song, but there's something in me that just won't combust. I think my seven-minute girlfriend is standing on the fuse.

"What's up?" I shout. And she looks at me like she's forgotten that I exist. This means she's also forgotten to guard herself from me, so I have a moment when I see the sentences behind her eyes. 'I can't do this. This is too fucking hard.'

I change my question. I say, "What's wrong?" And just like that, her sentences are shut behind a screen. But I'm curious. Yes, I'm damn curious.

"Not a fucking thing," she says. "And I think maybe our time is up."

"You don't need a ride anymore?" I ask. I'm not above using my wheels to angle for some more time with a complicated girl.

"Fuck." The song has ended now and everyone is cheering. I barely hear her shout, "Wait right here."

Stacie takes her bow, she's with Cynthia-Rose like they're already spooning. While the guy with Aubrey uses his hands to clap, Chloe puts her hand on Aubrey's shoulder and leans in to shout in her ear. What follows is one of those ropeless tugs of war, measured in centimeters of pull and pull away. I can't hear any of it until Aubrey screams, "I am not trashed!" which of course means she is, because who the hell else would use such a completely wasted phrase? The guy is starting to catch on and is trying to catch up by catching hold. But his instinct totally defeats him, because his hand swerves somewhere near her breast, which isn't really the terrain he needs to keep his ground. Chloe's yank trumps his hairy palm in this contest, and Aubrey is soon stumbling in my direction.

Before I really know what's happening, Aubrey's tilting into me and I'm catching her. Then she's heaving down, and I'm sure she's about to puke all over me, but instead she rises and looks at me and says, "You have really ugly shoes." Chloe's next to me now, saying, "Let's go." She leaves Aubrey there for me to carry as she yells, "Get the fuck out of my way" to people, uncrowding them with her snarl. My heart understands the direction we're going in, because it starts pounding like it's got something really damn important to say, and by the time I'm out of my head enough to really use my eyes, there's someone in our way, and that someone is the girl who took the key to my heart and swallowed it with a smile.

"I need your car," she says.

And it's like I've forgotten that the word for "What?" is "What?" because I just stand there and look at Julie and think she's talking to me and somehow translate that into she's giving me a chance.

"I need to go somewhere," she tells me. "I promise I'll bring it back."

I'm reaching for the keys in my pocket. I'm thinking I'll go with you. I'm thinking of passenger-seat conversations and making song dedications in my head. Her face lit by that nighttime driving light-two parts dashboard, one part headlight strobe from the opposite lane. I am remembering that so much.

Fuck, I loved her then. And then it is blurring into now. I'm thinking why not? I'm thinking we're still the same people. And a voice outside of me is saying, "I'm afraid the car's already full. No room for you, Julie. Sorry."

This Chloe girl's grinning now, all transparent sweetness and light.

"Excuse me?" Julie asks.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. Let me try again. FUCK OFF."

"I think turning off to fucking is your department, Chloe. Now why don't you take Drunkzilla here and go find some nice Weezer fans to rocktease. I'm talking to Beca, not you."

And I'm thinking: She's fighting over me. Julie is fighting over me.

But for some reason it's Chloe who's putting her arm around me and putting her hand in my back pocket.

I'm about to shudder her off, but then Julie says, "Come on, Beca, we're really late and need the car. I'll pay you back for the gas." And I know right away that I'm not a part of her "we." I've been fucking exiled from her "we."

"I'm going to find Ralph," Aubrey decides.

"Hell, no, you're not," Chloe says, taking her arm from my shoulder and linking it around Aubrey's elbow. Which leaves us in this weird we're off to see the Wizard pose, with Julie blocking us like the Wicked Witch of the Past.

She could have me so easily. But instead she snorts and says, "You can take her. I only wanted her car."

And with that, Julie leaves me for good. Every time I see her, from now until I die, she will leave me for good. Over and over and over again.

Chloe takes her hand out of my back pocket and steadies Aubrey with her full body. It's my turn to lead now, and I can barely do it. It's not that I'm drunk or stoned or spiraling high. It's just that I'm defeated. And that's impairing all of my senses.

There's only one hopeful chord in this cacophony, and it's this girl I'm following. I know I could tell her to get a ca. I have a feeling she can more than afford it, but I like the idea of leaving with her and staying with her. She says good-bye to the club manager as we reach the door and are released onto the street. The sidewalk is full of smokers, talking or posing their way to ash. I get the nod from a couple of people I vaguely know. Ordinarily if I left with two hot girls, there'd also be some looks of admiration. Maybe it's because of the clear anger between Chloe and Aubrey, or maybe it's because they all think I'm straight-whatever the case, I get no more congratulations than a cabdriver does for picking up a fare.

I know I should offer to help Chloe propel Aubrey forward, but the truth is that I don't feel like I can carry anyone but myself right now. The streets are empty. I am empty. Or, no, I am full of pain. It's my life that's empty.

I stumble for my keys. Julie will not be waiting for me inside the car. Julie will not be waiting for me ever again.

I shouldn't have come here. I shouldn't have been anywhere that she could find.

We're at my car.

"What the fuck is that?" Chloe asks.

I shrug and say, "It's a Yugo."

End of Chapter 3.

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Yugo is a car also known as Zastava Koral.


	4. Chapter 4

Thank you for the views and reviews and the follows, much appreciated. It boost my confidence to write/post more.

About Chloe's swears, it's just that Chloe has a bad night, Aubrey being drunk, meaning she would probably jump at anyone and that they need a ride, then there's Julie who wasn't suppose to be there (she assumed Julie's following them), then when she though that she's lucky to have met/kiss Beca, she turns out to be Julie's ex, and Beca's car isn't helping. So yeah rough night, how can she not curse. But I'll try to reduce unnecessary swears on future chapter.

All credits goes to Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

 _Chapter 3 Summary: Chloe's having a hard time dealing with drunk Aubrey, Luckily Beca's is there to help, or to just drive them. Then Julie want to borrow Beca's car, but Chloe won't let Julie. Only to find out what Beca's car is._

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Evil Ex**

Chloe's POV

So this is what my promising life has been reduced to. A wealthy daughter of a famous producer who chose a cheap university to accompany her best friend, a girl whose possibilities are supposedly infinite, is sitting through the middle of an April night in the passenger side of a Yugo that smells like Julie's patchouli aromatherapy oil. Perhaps it's only the vehicle that won't start, but it feels like it's my life that won't start. Yes, this Yugo with the passenger-side seat metal coming through the torn seat fabric, scratching against the back of my thigh, this Cold War relic that won't respond to Beca's turn of the ignition key is like a metaphor for my sorry-ass life: STALLED.

Beca might be a music goddess but she's also a parking god because she scored a spot right in front of the club. The unfortunate consequence of which is that now my stalled ears are receiving the listening benefit of the band playing inside the club and they're really good and that's really pissing me off. I'm not sure if I backed into my life by getting into this Yugo with my new almost-girlfriend, or if I backed out of it by leaving the club to save Aubrey once again, but whichever end it is, I'm left wanting more music. It's now Cynthia-Rose on the stage but I can still hear that the Stacie girl is singing with another Green Day cover. How is that possible and why does it sound so damn good? And if the Yugo doesn't start within one second, I am outta here. I don't care how tempted I am to try for another seven minutes of being Beca's girlfriend after we've got Aubrey back to my place. For a poor schmuck, she's temptatiously cute.

"Do you hear that?" I ask Beca.

"What? Is the engine starting?" The poor schmuck is not only cute and a great head-bang thrash-dancer, she's probably a good guy. At least she proved deft at maneuvering a drunken Aubrey goddess into the backseat of a freakin' Yugo and making her think it was her idea. Let's not forget the part about her being a great kisser. She deserves better than a Julie and a Yugo.

I tell her, "No. Dude. Listen up. That rhythmic banging inside the club? It's called drumming. It's like, famous as an underlying staple of sound since primitive cultures." I play drums on the glove compartment of the Yugo. The compartment pops open from my banging. A Polaroid of Julie is taped inside the compartment. I rip it out. Bloody hell! I toss the picture out the window and turn to face Beca. "Your band needs a drummer. I saw you grinding to earlier Green Day cover back in the club. I know you feel rhythm more than just your heart-attack-inducing music skills. Think about it. What would 'Chump' have been without Tres Cool? Get a drummer for your band."

Aubrey has yet to reach her warm-cuddly drunk stage, post-heave and pre-slumber, which would put her in inquisitive stage about now, and right on schedule, from the backseat, she interjects, "Really," because Aubrey is always picking up sentences where I leave 'em off. "Driver person. Hey!" She taps Beca's shoulder from behind her. Beca looks around to her but quickly turns back around to face me. Such a pretty girl, such rancid tequila breath. Aubrey wants to know, "Why would you wear such ugly shoes? Answer me, driver person. Please?"

"The shoes go with the car, Aubrey," I tell her. "Yugo drivers are required to wear torn and graffitied hi-top Chucks shit on their feet. It's like a rule. It's in the manual." I pull the Yugo car manual from the glove compartment. A chewed-up wad of gum extends from the manual back to the compartment. I take the McDonald's napkin stuck inside the compartment and wipe the gum away from the manual. Fucking Julie and her Bubblicious. I throw the manual into the backseat for Aubrey's perusal.

She ignores the Good Book. "Are you Yugoslavian, driver person?" Aubrey asks Beca. "Chloe, is that why she's driving us home? She's the taxi driver, right?"

"Sure," I tell her. She'll be the taxi driver as soon as her Yugo cab will fucking start. We're operating on a limited window of opportunity here. It took ten minutes just to get Aubrey into the backseat. I can see Ralph now, loitering outside the club, smoking a cigarette, glancing towards the Yugo, ready to pounce on Aubrey again, I'm sure, if this Yugo doesn't blow outta here soon.

"Is there such an ethnicity as Yugoslavian anymore?" Beca asks. "Now that the country's all broken up? That was some bad shit that went down there in Serbia and Croatia, right? Damn shame." She shakes her head and her hand idles on the ignition key, as if she's given up. She knocks her head against the wheel, then slams her fist against the stick shift. She's done. Can't take it anymore. This car ain't going anywhere. She looks so depressed and defeated. I don't have the heart to slam her for acting like she's grieving for Yugoslavia when it's so obvious she's really grieving for Julie. Aubrey informs us, "I'm part Yugoslavian, you know. On my great-grandpa's side."

I tell her, "You're part Transylvanian, too, bitch. Be quiet. I need to think." How the hell are we going to get home now? And why do I have to get Aubrey home, anyway? There's a hot girl sitting next to me even if she is a Julie pass-along, but she's got potential to be molded. Here I am in Manhattan, like Dad's favorite Stevie Wonder song goes: New York, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everythang. Shit is supposed to be happening here, not stalled Yugo shit. Through the car windshield, I can see the Empire State Building, lit up in pink and green for Easter. I am reminded that Jesus died for Aubrey's sins, not mine-I'm from a different tribe-so why am I saving her ass again when I could be outside this Yugo getting some life-living going on? I never properly used up those two add-on minutes of being Beca's girlfriend.

Aubrey says, "You're not the boss of me."

It's basic instinct, I can't help myself. I turn around to face Dragonbreath and snap, "Yes, I am!" She giggles, satisfied to have gotten a rise out of me.

Aubrey's merciful giggling transforms to dozing. In the reflection off the passenger-side mirror, I see that Aubrey appears to be falling asleep, her cheek pressed against the backseat window. I've never seen her pass out without heaving first. Beca and her Yugo may have magical properties, after all. Please, let it last till we can make it back home.

A heave-snore from the backseat announces that Aubrey is indeed out. YES! Sweet Jesus, thank you for this temporary stay, and hey, I'll throw in thanks for the dying-for-my-sins thing, too. You ROCK, J.C.! I'm totally not gonna stress on the fact that once I get home, I'll have to sleep next to Dragonbreath to make sure she doesn't choke on her own vomit in her sleep. Again.

"That's one problem solved," I tell Beca. I place my left hand on her right hand, which is clutched around the stick shift. "Now, what are we gonna do about this other one?"

She flinches a little at my touch and pulls her hand away to turn the ignition key again. Don't know why I placed my hand on hers anyway. She wants to know, "Why would you fuck up Julie's Barbies?" and now I'm like, Shit, is this the price of the sacrifice for Aubrey passing out unexpectedly early that Beca has taken over the melancholy stage that usually follows Aubrey's inquisitive one? "I have three sisters and I know that's some serious business, messing with another girl's Barbies." Okay, maybe she's not being melancholic because her sarcastic smile lets me know she's back to being standard-issue band-girl irony creature. Damn her that it somewhat makes me wanna jump her bones. Still, I can tell she's looking for information, but I am not going into the Julie's thing with her. I just can't.

On the other hand, perhaps I could make a project out of Beca. Detox her from Julie, rehabilitate her, put her through a good-girlfriend immersion program. I like sevens. We could go steady like all sweet and nice, for seven days instead of minutes. Then I'll set her free, less the Julie baggage, molded and perfected into the great girl I know she is under those Julie-heavy eyes. She'll be my gift to womankind, an ideal lesbian or bisexual specimen of musicianship and making out. I'll send her back out into the world thoroughly cleansed of irony, no longer holding all females in contempt as potential Julie suspects. Now who rocks?

A white van barrels down the one-way street in the wrong direction, stopping in front of the fire hydrant directly ahead of the Yugo. "Oh, thank God," Beca says. Interesting. We're in tune on the divine intervention thing. Fate? A guy emerges from the van and I recognize him as the guy who made out with the non-singing member of Beca's band after their band's set and someone at one corner. I only caught a minute of their kissing before I had to look away.

If not for the really hot kissing I witnessed between those two, I might not have answered Beca's request to be her five-minute girlfriend by pulling her mouth down to mine. That seems like years ago, not minutes, what with Dragonbreath and the stalled Yugo since, and WHY am I giving so much thought to being suspended in time and in Yugo with this Beca girl, anyway? She's hung up on Julie!

The guy leans into Beca's open window. She tells Beca, "Pop the hood and we'll try to jump-start this baby."

"Yeah," Beca says, like it's their routine. "Thanks, Bumper."

Bumper looks my way. He says, "Amy could use some help in the van if you don't mind."

Whatever.

I shrug and get out of the Yugo while Bumper pops the Yugo hood to attach the jumper cables. I pass Ralph leaning against the wall of the club and I give him a shove, just because. Then I step to the passenger side of the van and see band equipment in the back. I knew Beca's band had a van! Why didn't I specify, van, not Yugo?

The girl sitting in the driver side of the van says, "Hi. I'm Fat Amy."

I tell her, "You call yourself Fat Amy?"

"Yeah, so twig bitches like you don't do it behind my back."

"Noted, but I'll just call you Amy. I'm Chloe."

Amy hands me a crumpled fifty-dollar bill. She says, "Bumper and I chipped in. We saw that kiss between you and Beca." She sings out, "Giving her something she can feel!"

"I don't get it," I say.

The hood of the van obstructs our view, but we can hear the rattle of the Yugo engine threatening to come to life. "No time to explain," Amy says. "Let's just say Bumper and I hate the fucking guts of Beca's ex and we'd like to give her a little assistance with moving on with her life. So, please, take the girl out tonight, see the city, see the backseat of the Yugo, I don't care, just please take our friend out tonight. We've already decided that we like you and that you'll be Beca's salvation. No pressure or anything."

Flattery could get her everywhere and I am all about salvation right now, but, "Can't," I tell her, though I'm tempted. Really tempted. I'm curious what would happen if I dared another leap towards Beca's hand, or other parts, like that really tasty mouth of hers. "Beca's giving me and my drunk friend a ride back to Barden. She's asleep in the back of the Yugo now." Amy says, "We've got a mattress in the back of the van. We'll trade you. We'll get her home if you'll take on Beca tonight."

I decide some living is worth doing. "Done," I tell her. I slip the fifty into my inside shirt pocket, then scribble the directions to our dorm on Amy's hand. I tell her where to find the key under the potted plant. And I am not feeling frigid about Beca at all. I can't remember the last time I felt anticipation-not of sex (necessarily)-of getting to know a delicious new person, even if she is a poor schmuck.

So we're settled, and I get out of the van with Amy, who enlists Bumper to help her transport Aubrey from the Yugo to the van. But once I'm back inside the Yugo, I have no chance to explain to Beca the new order of this middle of the night.

Because through the windshield, I see that Ralph at the wall is doing the soul-brother shake with a new arrival who happens to be the mindfucking guy who I now call Evil Ex. And fuck, the Evil Ex has seen me and now he's at my side at the passenger door of the Yugo and he's saying, "Hey, baby, you ready to pick up where we left off?"

End of Chapter 4.

* * *

More swears, probably next chapter too because Chloe's ex has just been added to her list of things to swear on a rough night.


	5. Chapter 5

Thank you for the views and reviews and the follows, much appreciated.

 _Chapter 4 Summary: Beca's yugo fails to start, fortunately Amy and Bumper came to help not only the car but also in her love life, Amy talked Chloe to accompany Beca for the rest of the night. But then Chloe's ex spotted them._

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Fuckon?**

Beca's POV

I never thought Emily would betray me like this. I have done nothing but love her and treat her right. I've stood by her side and defended her when people called her trash and said they didn't understand why I kept her. I thought that meant something. But no. Now when I need her most, she's totally bailed. I turn the key and I turn the key and I turn the key and she doesn't do a damn thing. How alone am I right now? Even my car has decided to give up on me.

I could be really mad at her. But mostly I'm afraid that this is it. Terminal. That we can volt her till the lights go out in Manhattan, and she'll just sit here. Unblinking. I can't afford to fix her again. If this is it, then this is really it.

I'm not really paying attention when Amy and Bumper removed Aubrey from my backseat. After all the time it took to get her in. But I can understand the impulse to abandon the ship.

I'm about to help Bumper connect the cables when this guy I've never seen before leans into Chloe's window and says, "Hey, baby, you ready to pick up where we left off?"

What. The. Fuck?

Okay, maybe I hang with a little weird crowd and all, but still, I never, ever, in a million zillion years would have imagined that a guy could use the phrase "hey, baby" and mean it. He says it like he's whistling at some girl's boobs as she walks down the street. Who does that?

I expect Chloe to put him right in his place. But instead she freezes. She looks away, as if she can ignore her way out of it. By some logic, this should mean that she's now looking at me, since I'm 180 degrees away from our uninvited guest. But instead she focuses on the dashboard, on the place where the lighter should be. And I guess I'm a little surprised, because it was just starting to look like we were going to go someplace together. That this wasn't just going to be a ride home. Now it's becoming a ride nowhere, and I'm sad that it's so out of my hands.

"Baby, I'm back," the guy goes on. "How 'bout getting out of this heap and saying hello?"

Now, it's one thing to try to harass Chloe out of my passenger seat. But to bring Emily into it is completely uncalled for.

"Can I help you?" I ask.

He keeps looking at Chloe as he talks to me. "Yeah, buddy. I just got back to the States and I've been looking for this lady here. Can you spare her for a second?"

He reaches in the window, unlocks the door, and opens it.

"We'll be right back," he goes on. And I'm about to tell Chloe she doesn't have to do a thing. But right then she reaches over and pops off her seat belt. I figure this is a decision on her part until she fails to follow it up with another movement. She just stays in the car.

"Baby-," he purrs as he reaches in for her, as if she's a kid in a car seat. "I've missed you so much."

I turn the key in the ignition. Still no start. Amy comes over to my window, looks inside the car, and says, "Problem here?"

Now it's Amy that Chloe looks at. And for some reason, this snaps her back.

"Tom," she says with an edge usually reserved for cutlery, "you haven't missed me for one fucking minute. You have never for one single second in your entire pathetic life missed me. You might have missed fucking with my head, and you might have missed the satisfaction you so clearly got from demolishing me, but those are your emotions you're missing, not mine. I'm afraid I can't help you."

"C'mon, baby." Tom says, leaning into her. She flinches back into the seat. I can sense Amy about to say something, but I beat her to it.

"Dude, nobody puts baby in a corner," I say. "Get the fuck out of my car."

Tom holds his hands up, steps out of the doorway.

"Just giving the lady a choice," he says. "I didn't realize she swings this way. I wish you the best of luck coz she will swing back to me."

"Asshole," Chloe murmurs.

Tom laughs. "Piece of shit car: five dollars. Value of Chloe's opinion: three cents. Irony of her calling me an asshole: priceless."

"Go. Away," Chloe says.

"What? Are you afraid I'm going to tell the truth?" Tom looks at me now. "Don't be fooled, partner. She talks a great game, but when you actually get to the field, you realize it's fucking empty. "

From somewhere beyond the hood, Amy yells, "Gentleman, start your engine!"

I cannot find a way to pray to God or some higher being. But I damn well feel comfortable praying to Emily, and right at this moment I give her my evangelical all.

Please, start. I will buy premium gas for the next month if you please, please, please start.

I turn the key in the ignition. There's a slight catch. And then-

Emily's talking to me again. And she's saying, let's get the hell out of here.

"I'd love to stay and chat," I say to Tom, "but we've got somewhere to be."

"Fine," Tom says, shutting the door more gently than I would've expected. "Just don't say I never warned you. You're dating the Tin Woman here. Look for a heart, you'll only come up with dead air."

"Thanks for the tip!" I say with mock cheer.

He reaches in the window and touches Chloe on the cheek, holding there for a moment.

"Baby, it's you," he says. Then he turns back to the sidewalk and heads right into the club.

"Seems like a nice guy," I say. Chloe doesn't respond.

Amy leans in my window now.

"Don't worry about her friend," she says. "We'll get her home. You two kids have fun now, you hear?"

"Sure thing," I tell her, even though Chloe looks like the only use she has for the word fun is to make the word funeral.

Bumper shuts the hood and gives me a thumbs-up. Then he and Amy walk back to the van hand in hand, the jumper cables dangling over their shoulders like a boa.

Chloe hasn't moved to put her seat belt back on. I don't know what this means. She turns to look at the door to the club.

"You okay?" I ask.

"I honestly have no idea," she says.

I put Emily into reverse and give our parking space away to whoever comes next. It gives me some satisfaction to know that my departure will become somebody else's good luck.

It's only when I've pulled out onto the street that I realize I have no idea where we're going.

"Do you want me to take you home?" I ask.

I take her silence as a no. Because wanting to go home is the kind of thing you speak up about.

I follow up with, "What do you want to do?"

This seems to be a pretty straightforward question to me. But she looks at me with this total incomprehension, like she's watching footage of the world being blown up, and I'm the little blurb on the corner of the screen saying what the weather is like outside.

I try again.

"You hungry?"

She just holds her hand to her mouth and looks out the front windshield.

"You thirsty?"

For all I know, she's counting the streetlamps.

"Know any other bands playing?"

Tumbleweed blowing down the armrest between us.

"Wanna watch some nuns make out?"

Am I even speaking out loud?

"Maybe see if E.T. is up for a threeway?"

This time she looks at me. And if she isn't exactly smiling, at least I think I see the potential for a smile there.

"No," she says. "I'd much rather watch some nuns make out."

"Okay, then," I say, swerving the car back towards the Lower East Side. "It's time for a little burlesque."

I say this with some authority, even though I have only the faintest of faint ideas of where I'm going. Stacie once told me about this place where strippers dressed up like nuns and that was only one of the acts. I figured it was too kitsch to be pervy and that seemed to be Chloe's range right there. As far as I could tell.

As we're driving, Chloe reaches over and turns on the radio. A black-lipsticked oldie:

The four of my Breakup Desolation Mix.

This, and every other song on this disc, is dedicated to Julie.

I like to think that we had it all  
We drew a map to a better place  
But on that road I took a fall  
Oh baby why did you run away?

Because maybe  
You're gonna be the one that saves me  
And after all  
You're my wonderwall

I hear your voice in my sleep at night  
Hard to resist temptation  
'Cause something strange has come over me  
And now I can't get over you

You watch me bleed until I can't breathe  
Shaking, falling onto my knees  
And now that I'm without your kisses  
I'll be needing stitches  
Tripping over myself,  
Aching, begging you to come help  
And now that I'm without your kisses  
I'll be needing stitches

And if this is the soundtrack, my mind and my broken heart collaborate to provide me with a movie: That night she was so tired she said she needed to lie down, so she climbed over the seat and laid out in the back. I thought I'd lost her, but then five minutes later my cell phone rang and it was her, calling me from my own backseat. In a sleepy voice she told me how safe and comfortable she felt, how she was remembering all those late night drives back from vacation, and how she'd stretch herself out and feel like her parents were driving her bed, nothing unusual about the movement of the road under the wheels and the tree branches waving across the windshield. She said those moments made her feel like the car was home, and maybe that's how I made her feel, too.

Eventually she fell asleep, but I kept the phone against my ear, lulled by her breathing, and her breathing again in the background. And yes, it felt like home. Like everything belonged exactly where it was.

"I so don't need this right now," Chloe says. But she doesn't change the song. She opened the glove box and saw a CD album of The Cure from the stacked CDs in there.

"Have you ever thought about their name?" I ask, just to make conversation. "I mean, for what?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The Cure. What do they think they're the cure for? Happiness?"

"This coming from the one called The Fuck Offs?"

I smiled. And I can't help it. I think, wow, she knows our name.

"Stacie's thinking of changing it to The Fuck Ons," I tell her.

"How 'bout simply Fuck On?"

"Maybe one word? Fuckon?"

"The Friendly Fuckons?"

"My Fuckon Or Yours?"

"Why is he such a fucking Fuckon?"

I look at her. "Is that a band name or a statement?"

"He had no right to do that. None."

We break into silence again. I lob a question right into it.

"Who is he, then?"

"An ex," she says, slumping back in the seat a little. "The ex, I guess."

"Like Julie," I say, relating.

She sits up and gives me a purely evil glance. "No. Not like Julie at all. This was real."

I pause for a second, listen to our breakup playing under the conversation.

"That was mean," I say. "You have no idea."

"Neither do you. So let's drop it. I'm supposed to show you a good time."

I take this last sentence as a kind of apology. Mostly because that's what I want it to be.

I'm winding through the Lower East Side now, on the streets that have names and not numbers. The night is still very much young here, hipster congregants exhaling their smoke from sidewalk square to sidewalk square. I find a parking space on the darker side of Ludlow, then convince Chloe to retrace Emily's steps until we're in front of a pink door.

"Camera Obscura?" Chloe asks.

I nod.

"Bring on the nuns," she says.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to knock or just open the door. The answer is given to me in the form of a burly bouncer dressed in a Playboy Bunny outfit.

"ID?" he asks.

I reach for my cousin's license from Illinois, won in a particularly intense Xbox challenge.

Chloe pats her pockets down. Blankly.

And just as I think, Oh fuck, she says those exact words.

End of Chapter 5.

* * *

Songs used:

Maps - Maroon5

Wonderwall - Oasis

Stiches - Shawn Mendes


	6. Chapter 6

Thank you for the views and reviews and the follows, much appreciated.

The strip bar will have it's own intimate moment and a whole lot more ;)

 _Chapter 5 Summary: Chloe's really having a bad night, added with her ex boyfriend, it easily became the worst of all. Nuns making out or a threesome with E.T? Can Beca turn this hell of a night around?_

* * *

 **Chapter 6: Salvatore**

Chloe's POV

Oh fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUUUUUUUUUCK!

Why does time cease to tick when I see Tom, only now do I get it. Kibbutz in South Africa: BIG FUCKING MISTAKE. Like, HUGE. What was I thinking? So we've broken up five times over the last three years. Somehow in the back of my mind was the thought that either (1) Tom and I would work things out next time, and what better place to do that than away from our families and friends in a commune on the flip side of the world, or (2) we wouldn't work things out yet again, but I'd be the best freakin' worker that kibbutz had ever seen; and as a bonus, Tom would die of jealousy when I fell madly in love with some beautiful surfer boy from Capetown and left Tom weeding gardens while I bailed on the kibbutz to backpack across the world with my new surfer love who hopefully would have a pretty-looking name like Ndgijo.

Except that would never happen to me. How did such a reputedly smart girl get herself in this predicament, on the brink of adulthood, with no future to grab on to? These last few weeks I've been missing Tom as much as I've been bemoaning him as the Evil Ex. I've held on to the hope of surprising him by showing up in South Africa, yet when he was RIGHT THERE in front of me, what did I do? I froze. Suddenly all my fantasies of reconciliation were gone, suddenly all I could remember was how I was never good enough for him, political enough, committed enough. Tom wasn't a lying cheating skank like Julie, but who had I been kidding? He had been, as Aubrey likes to remind me, a "controlling fuckface." So right there, in a fucking Yugo, next to the poor schmuck I introduced myself to by making out with her, I finally had the moment of clarity that Mom and Dad and Aubrey have been waiting for me to have since I was fifteen: ENOUGH! Aubrey has been right all along. Tom and I are better off living our lives apart from one another.

Oh fuck. Did I just say that aloud? I'm trying to pay attention to Beca but I can't get Tom's words in front of the club off repeat playback in my mind: She talks a great game, but when you actually get to the field, you realize it's fucking empty.

The Tin Woman! Tom called me the fucking Tin Woman! I lost my virginity and my whole youth to him, and that's his review of me? At least I can be grateful that when Tom took off from South Africa back here without telling anybody. I was so hell-bent on the sentiment. Oh, God, I want to be sick right now.

Chloe, why are you such a regression bitch? One night last weekend spent holding Aubrey's hair back while she puked in the toilet, feeling lonely and lost-for me, not for Aubrey; she had an army of dudes outside the bathroom waiting for her to sober up-and I let the dark side of my mind, the Tom side, win out. As Aubrey slept it off later that night in the extra twin bed that's been in my room for her since kindergarten, I wrote to Tom. Was it all the caffeine I consumed riding the night out with Aubrey, or the leftover ganja haze of the reggae club where we'd passed the night? Secondhand smoke may be deadlier than firsthand straight-edge inhale, at least when it comes to impairing my ability to distinguish between lonely longing for the Evil Ex and actually trying to get back together with him.

I hope Tom never finds out the Tin Woman was ready to compromise. I didn't outright say I wanted to get back together. But I said I was willing to consider it. I told him I could be vegan. I could be kosher fucking vegan! I could learn to care about saving the sea otter and only drinking fair-trade coffee. I could believe that Tom and his brothers in Tel Aviv actually have talent and will become the next big thing, an older, punk-infused, fuck-Europe, politicized version of Hanson. I would at least consider living with his miserable, controlling, psychotic mother in Tel Aviv once Tom starts his mandatory Israeli Army service next year, and oh alright fine, she could teach me how to cook the meals he likes and how to hang linens on a line in the sun so his sheets would always be crisp and fresh.

I can change! I can change! No. I can't change. I shouldn't change. "What the fuck do you have to change for?" she said. "He should fucking change, uptight bastard. Why are you doing this? If you need some end-of-adolescence protest, couldn't you like just wreck your dad's Jaguar on the Palisades Parkway or something? Are you really going to put us through you and Tom, the nightmare couple, one more time? "Chloe, you know you'll meet someone else, don't you?" Only I didn't believe her until tonight. What good is Aubrey now, passed out in Beca's friend's van? I wonder if her cell is turned on. I need to tell her Tom is back! And I fucked up but now I have officially woken the fuck up.

"Chloe?" the Playboy Bunny bouncer responds to my pronouncement of oh fuck, which is no small relief because I don't have a fake ID. When your dad is the well-known head of a major record label, it tends not to be necessary at most clubs. "Toni?" I say. S/He grabs me in a hug. Toni interned for Dad last year while deciding whether s/he wanted to pursue a career in the music industry; s/he was also my biggest advocate in my futile campaign (thus far) to convince Dad to produce an all-punk band tribute album to the Spice Girls. "Still working on that demo?"

S/He pulls out a CD strapped inside the bushy tail at her back. "Just finished it! Will you pass it on?"

"Sure," I say, hoping Beca will not interrogate me about who am I, some Twenty-two-year-old flannel-wearing girl, to be passing on demos.

"Go right on over to the VIP area," Toni says. "I'll make sure your drinks are on the house."

"I don't drink," I remind Toni.

"Oh, live a little," s/he says, bumping me at the hip. "Miss Straight Edge, bend 'round the corner for once in your life." Toni turns to Beca. "Awkward? Eighteen-Nineteen years old? Give me a fucking break. But have fun, kids."

S/He gives Beca a playful slap on the ass as we walk in and Beca doesn't react like Tom, who would have pounced back at a drag queen daring to touch her. Instead, Beca laughs and turns back around to return the gesture on Toni's ass. S/he gives her a butt shimmy dance in return. "I like this one, Chloe!" s/he says. "Big improvement. Good choice."

As opposed to what-nasty, fermented egg, the kind one naturally would assume Julie would pass off?

We sit down at a small table that miraculously vacated of bodies as we approached it. For fuck's sake, my heart actually flutters for a moment when Beca pulls out the wooden chair for me. Who does that? And why does that simple gesture for a moment make me forget I am REALLY PISSED OFF and MY LIFE IS OVER. I am distracted from my Tom malaise by the nuns making out to "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" on the stage, and find myself chuckling, all of a sudden having a mental image of me and Beca in a threeway with E.T. I feel the crack of a smile on my lips and a non-frigid buzz spreading through my body. In the flashing neon lights, and with the distraction of the stage show, I finally have the opportunity to truly appraise Beca. I admire her vintage gas station attendant jacket with the name "Salvatore" stenciled under the Texaco logo, and I admit to wanting to run my fingers through the locks of her hair. She seems to have an ironic but sweet half-smile stenciled on her face, despite her Julie hangover.

Beca waves thanks in Toni's direction at the door. She says, "Nice seats your friend hooked us up with. I have to admit, between your drunk girlfriend and your Yugo-insulting ex-boyfriend, it's a relief to see you have some nice friends." She winks at me and why won't that kind smile leave her face because I know if we are ever going to make it through this night/morning/whatever we have going, eventually I am going to have to tell her about Julie and that smile will be gone and I don't want to be the person responsible for killing it.

I don't owe her an explanation or anything but I do say, "I'm sorry about Tom." Only what I'm really sorry about is what I said about Julie, but I can't find it in myself to speak that apology. Yet.

Beca tells the cocktail bunny who approaches our table to please bring us drinks with little umbrellas in them. She says to please just make sure the drinks are of the virgin variety.

Then she turns to me and says, "I don't drink. I'm pretty straight edge. I hope that's not a problem for you."

I'm only "pretty" straight edge myself. I mean, I don't drink or smoke or do drugs, but I'm not over the top about it like some of the straight-edge breed who also don't eat meat or have sex, either. My straight-edginess is rather firm, but reform. I mean to answer Beca with, "It's not a problem for me. It's a fucking miracle." But I think I end up just doing some inane yes/no head-bob of shock. Whoa! Julie dated a straight-edge girl, and one who says please? How did she survive her without being drunk or stoned, like the rest of them? I'm not sure whether to admire or pity Beca for being a fellow straight edge, but I am stoked, too. I'm on a date with a girl who can have a good time without trying to get wasted? The universe is full of surprises. Respect to Julie.

"Want to tell me about it?" Beca asks once the bunny has hopped away.

"About what?"

"The Ex?"

Is this what happens on dates? You kiss before you've met, then talk about why your previous relationship failed? I'm stumped. The only guy I've ever been with is Tom, and his idea of a date was watching Schindler's List in his dorm room. Besides the random incident with Beca, I've never even truly kissed anyone besides Tom, unless you count Aubrey at summer camp when I was thirteen, which I don't. I have no idea how to do this "date" thing. This must be the reason I am frigid.

I really don't want to talk about Tom. I want to forget I ever entertained the notion of getting back together with him. I want to forget I've thrown away my future and that now I have to come up with a whole new plan. So I tell Beca, "I know how to drive a stick shift." Because I think Julie can't. "So you're saying you could drive Emily back to Barden tonight, assuming she'll start again?"

"Who's Emily?"

"My Yugo."

"You have a name for your Yugo? Please don't tell me you're one of those who also names their private parts."

"Unfortunately, I've yet to find the perfect name for mine, so it's in this netherworld of nameless identity right now." Beca glances down at her crotch, then back at me. "But if you think up a good name, let me know. We'd like something a little exotic, like maybe Tris."

Frigid can thaw, right?

Beca adds, "Stacie named hers a dude and she wanted to name our band Dickache. What do you think?"

"Sorry, I'm stuck on The Fuck Offs. Catchy. The sales reps at Wal-Mart will love it."

Our conversation is interrupted by a new act on the stage. Two of Toni's soul sisters are doing an onstage grind to "Edelweiss," making the previous nun performers seem like, well, nuns. Beca stands up and offers her hand to me. I have no idea what she wants, but what the hell, I take her hand anyway, and she pulls me up on my feet then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where we're dancing on the marble floor for our wedding. Somehow my head presses Beca's T-shirt and in this moment I am forgetting about time and Tom because maybe my life isn't over. Maybe it's only beginning.

I shiver at that thought and in response, Beca takes her jacket off and places it around my shoulders. I feel safe and not cold and from the vibe the jacket gives off, I also feel fairly confident that the original Texaco Salvatore was a good family man, with perhaps a propensity for wearing his wife's panties and betting his kids' college money at the track, but otherwise a solid dude.

I wake up from the dance dream when the audience applauds the end of the stage performance and Beca feels pressed too close against me without the music going. Beca/Salvatore/lovely dancing partner can't be real. It's not possible. Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.

"Why are you so fucking nice?" I ask, and shove Beca away. I don't bother to acknowledge her shocked expression. Score, Chloe. I have killed her smile, and I didn't even have to tell her about Julie. "I gotta pee."

I run away towards the bathroom. A few people are waiting at the door but a single finger snap from Toni and the line disperses. I don't really have to pee. I need to think. I need to sleep. I need Aubrey to be sober so I can talk to her. This morning, my life seemed so clear. Just to go into the city to see the band Aubrey likes rather than suffer through an evening with Mom and Dad entertaining the dreaded hip-hop people at the house. This night was supposed to end like any other night out with Aubrey, watch her hook up with a guy, and then get her home safely. I'm not that girl who randomly meets a guy one night and has her life change. I wear cords and flannel shirts. I don't have the killer body like Julie or Aubrey. Sometimes I don't wash my hair for three days and sometimes I don't floss. What's this Beca girl doing here with me?

I step inside the bathroom as the previous occupant leaves. I clean the toilet with a paper towel, then sit down on it. A trail of graffiti is written down the wall next to the toilet.

Jimmy gives good head. Climb Ev'ry Mountain, indeed.

Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.-Proust.

You're the one for me, fatty.-Morrissey

I want it that way.-Backstreet Boys.

Claire, meet me on Rivington in front of the candy store after the show. You bring the Pez. You know.

Psst-Sitting on the john and wondering when this night will end? Answer: NEVER. Barden Bellas, unannounced show, TONIGHT, after the von Trapp massacre, before dawn rises? Be there or be square, ayyyy—

There's no date written on the wall but the black-marker handwriting looks fresh. I'm curious whose executive decision it was to name the toilet "the john," anyway? But could this show be tonight? I only fucking worship Barden Bellas. They turned down Dad to sign up with an indie label. They could make me light-stick dance all night. They could make me forget I want to crawl into my bed and hide under the covers, and that I only wasted my youth on Tom, and that I'm on a date with a good girl and I've given her more mixed signals than a dyslexic Morse code operator.

Do I dare show my face back at the table to Beca and tell her about Barden Bellas, I know she's a fan. I swiped the last make-up mix she burned for Julie that led off with the Barden Bellas track, "Don't You Forget About Me." God, she made great playlists for her. Tom's mixes for me were all crap, just a plain dick.

DICK! Did I really ask Beca if she had a name for her private part?

Maybe Tom called it right-I should have been more grateful for him, because no person besides Tom would ever put up with me.

Aubrey may be passed out in a stranger's van right now, but I know what she would say to me now: "Tom was NOT right. And go back out there and give this a better shot. You can do this. Bitch, get the fuck back out there."

I pick up the black Sharpie pen dangling from a string attached to the bathroom mirror and scribble my contribution to the graffiti trail on the wall:

The Cure. For the Ex's? I'm sorry, Beca. You know. Will you kiss me again?

I splash some cold water on my face at the bathroom sink and take a deep breath. Time to go back out there and make this right. I am brand-new. I can change. Only not for Tom. For me.

End of Chapter 6.


End file.
